KT said on Wednesday it has selected the final participating companies for its open innovation program K-PATH 2026 and will step up business cooperation with promising AI startups.

K-PATH is a program that fosters startups with AI technology as partners for KT's AI transformation (AX) business and carries out joint projects. KT has recruited participating companies through the K-PATH 2026 call since June.

A total of 193 companies applied. KT selected 16 after document screening and presentation evaluations. It assessed technology competitiveness, potential for application in industrial settings, commercialisation prospects and collaboration synergy.

The final selection covers 7 areas: enterprise AI and agents, physical AI and robotics, data for AI, AI trust and security, AI infrastructure and models, industry-specific vertical AI, and AI ESG.

Selected firms include Sionic AI, an enterprise generative AI platform company; Algorithm Labs, an industrial application AI agent company; Sky Intelligence, a synthetic data technology company for robot training; Private AI, an AI guardrails and privacy technology company; TEN Inc., a GPU resource management and AI infrastructure optimisation company; and Cflat AI, a multilingual AI counsellor solution company.

KT will connect the selected companies with relevant business divisions to pursue collaboration centred on real customer projects. It will review joint tasks including validation of ontology-based data analysis solutions, joint demonstration of AI digital twins for public sectors such as disaster, safety, firefighting and security, expansion of smart factories and AI-based manufacturing innovation linked to KT's manufacturing customer networks, and joint development of AI kiosks supporting daily-life education for older people and convenient ordering and payment.

From September, the partners will identify quick-win tasks that can deliver results in a short time. KT will build a cooperation system so projects go beyond proof-of-concept (PoC) and lead to commercialisation. Tasks with verified results will be developed into mid- to long-term joint businesses.

KT will disclose cooperation results and commercialisation cases between selected companies and business divisions at a K-PATH 2026 event on Oct. 20. It will pursue a second round of cooperation next year, including R&D tasks.

Park Sang-won (박상원), executive vice president and head of KT's AX business division, said K-PATH is an AX cooperation platform that supports partners in producing results with real customers and in the market. He said KT will combine its industry-by-industry AX experience with startups' innovative technology to generate business results and contribute to the growth of the domestic AX ecosystem.